Simon: A writer or a vet. Isn't it obvious? (Though I wanted to specialize in herpetology, not cats).

RTE: Who's your oldest friend?

Simon: Jean Marie Schiraldi, neé Ehramjian. Her house was my second home. Her mother ('Big Jeannie') was part Cherokee and was raised on a reservation in Oklahoma. When our big, old tomcat James came home covered with paint and motor oil, and we couldn't clean him (my mom and I both got clawed up trying), we brought him over to the Ehramjian's and Big Jeannie just picked him up by the scruff of the neck, dunked him in the sink and scrubbed him clean. And then blow-dried him. I was in awe of her.

RTE: If I ruled the world...

Simon: We wouldn't be at war, we'd have fully funded social programs (yeah, I'd pay more taxes for that). Small presses would be courted by Wal-Mart and Nutella would cure cancer.

RTE: Which book do you wish you'd written?

Simon: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel. Or The Eight by Katherine Neville. But that's just this week.

RTE: What makes you angry?

Simon: Prejudice, and since we're talking mysteries I'll narrow it down to those who dismiss genre fiction as somehow illiterate or less worthy. 'Cause you know they're the folks who can barely put an email together and then don't read the weighty books they do buy.

RTE: Name your five dream dinner party guests.

Simon: Gore Vidal, Colette, Lucinda Williams, Shakespeare, and Julia Child. We could talk art and taste and sensuality process – and the importance of pleasing the fickle, fickle public and ourselves!

RTE: Who would you least like to be stuck in a lift with?

Simon: Rush Limbaugh. Because then I'd be charged with murder. (One of my journalistic gigs is writing about radio, so I've listened to more conservative talk than my liver can tolerate).

RTE: What inspired you to start writing?

Simon: Honestly, I don't remember. I've been making up stories as long as I could write. Tried selling them to my classmates, too. But through my 20s and most of my 30s I focused on the journalism and nonfiction books (three big serious ones)! I always loved mysteries and loved reading them, but it wasn't until Kate Mattes (of Kate's Mystery Books here in Cambridge) told me, "You should write a mystery," that I started down this particular path. I think I was waiting for permission.

RTE: Where would you most like to live?

Simon: Here. I love Cambridge. It's a bookish liberal little city, the "People's Republic" and all that. But I wouldn't complain about having a pied a terre in Manhattan – and another in Venice as well.